Veil E-Book

Christian Joppke

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 277

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The Islamic headscarf has become the subject of heated legal and political debate. France and Germany have legislated against it, and even the UK, long a champion of multiculturalism, has recently restricted the veil proper. Ever since home-grown Islamic terrorism struck Europe, these debates have become even more prominent, impassioned and wide-ranging, with vital global importance. In this concise and beautifully written introduction to the politics of the veil in modern societies, Christian Joppke examines why a piece of clothing could have led to such controversy. He dissects the multiple meanings of the Islamic headscarf, and explores its links with the global rise of Islam, Muslim integration, and the retreat from multiculturalism. He argues that the headscarf functions as a mirror of identity, but one in which national and liberal identities overlap, exposing the paradox that while it may be an affront to liberal values, its suppression is equally illiberal. Veil: Mirror of Identity will illuminate, challenge and provoke readers, and will make compelling reading for scholars, students and general readers alike.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Preface

1 The Islamic Headscarf in Western Europe

The Meanings of the Headscarf

The Liberal State Meets the Islamic Headscarf

Outlook

2 The Pupil’s Headscarf in Republican France

The Two Forms of Laicity: Rights versus Unity

The Conseil d’Etat and Liberal Laicity

The Victory of Republican Laicity in the Political Sphere

3 The Teacher’s Headscarf in Christian–Occidental Germany

Open Neutrality and the Christian–Occidental State in Germany

For Religious Liberty and Neutrality: The Constitutional Court’s Headscarf Decision

Resurrection of the ‘Christian–Occidental’ State in the Political Sphere

An Evolving Conflict

4 The Extreme Headscarf in Multicultural Britain

British Multiculturalism Meets Islam

The Extreme Headscarf in British Courts

‘Marker of Separation’: the Political Opposition to the Extreme Headscarf

5 Liberalism and Muslim Integration

Bibliography

Index

Copyright © Christian Joppke 2009

The right of Christian Joppke to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2009 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4351-9

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4352-6(pb)

ISBN: 978-0-7456-5858-2(Single-user ebook)

ISBN: 978-0-7456-5857-5(Multi-user ebook)

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Pour Catherine, toujours

Preface

There has been an outpouring of books on the Islamic headscarf lately. The most intellectually impressive is anthropologist Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety (2005), which is an ethnographic study of female mosque goers and activists in Cairo, Egypt. It captures (and buries in academic jargon) the paradox that the headscarf, even if freely chosen, cannot but signify submission, notionally to God, but in reality to men. Most books on Europe are about the mother of all European headscarf controversies, France. Anthropologist John Bowen’s Why the French don’t like Headscarves (2006) confirms what Jürgen Habermas once said, in an informal setting, about American academics at large: ‘And then comes an American to clarify everything.’ Of all European headscarf books, Bowen’s is my favorite. You find in it a crisp synthesis of French republicanism and of the French (‘laic’) way of dealing with religion which obliterates most of the wordy treatises that have piled up on the topic, especially by French authors. The Politics of the Veil (2007), by the noted feminist scholar Joan Wallach Scott, is not trailing far behind. It includes a brilliant (if far-fetched) interpretation of the French headscarf obsession as a ‘clash of gender systems’, because, not just for Islam but for difference-blind French republicanism too, the female body is prickly disturbing. However, calling the Islamic repression of female flesh ‘recognition’ and the French exteriorizing of flesh ‘denial’ is a touch too slick, and one wonders whether the world outside Princeton works that way. The one notable French production on France is Secularism Meets Islam (2007), by leading Islam specialist Olivier Roy. It is the best (and deceptively misleading) exculpation of Islam that you can find, written from a sane perspective of ‘political liberalism’ which is stunningly exotic for a French pen.

So why another headscarf book? With the exception of legal scholar Dominic McGoldrick’s Human Rights and Religion – The Islamic Headscarf Debate in Europe (2006), few have noticed that other European countries also had headscarf controversies. In Germany, for instance, there has been anti-headscarf legislation almost simultaneously with that of France. This is an obvious invitation to compare – which in fact first raised my interest in the topic. But most of the headscarf books cited above are not just geographically but conceptually limited. Especially the French headscarf books, even when written by American academics, are too parochially French – they fail to see, and at best to take more seriously, that French republicanism is a variant of liberalism. So, in addition to broadening the horizon beyond France, the ambition of this book is to investigate the work that liberalism does in the reception of the headscarf. Liberalism, as John Gray (2000) brilliantly observed, has two faces: that of a modus vivendi for reconciling many ways of life; and that of a way of life in itself – one that is conducted autonomously and rationally. At the risk of simplification, one could say that French republicanism is liberalism as a way of life. Prohibiting the headscarf in the name of republicanism is thus within the ambit of liberalism. This is what all French headscarf books overlook.

Accordingly, the distinct angle of this book is to see the Islamic headscarf as a challenge to liberalism. As liberalism has two faces, two opposite responses to the headscarf are equally possible within its ambit: toleration of the headscarf, as in Britain; or its prohibition, as in France. Comparing France and Britain, this book throws into sharp relief the two liberalisms’ difficulties with the headscarf: in its ethical variant (France), liberalism risks to turn into its repressive opposite, whereas in the procedural variant (Britain) liberalism encourages illiberal extremism.

But there is a third possible way to respond to the headscarf, which falls outside the confines of liberalism. I take this to be (in part) the German response, which completes the canvas of cases considered in this book: the Islamic headscarf is selectively rejected in this case because it is Islamic; conversely, the Christian headscarf is accepted because it is part of ‘our’ culture. There is a difference in kind between the German and the French and British responses: if you are Muslim – the Germans seem to say – you cannot expect to be included on equal terms, because our society is ‘Christian–occidental’. The French and British responses to the headscarf are, in different ways, liberal responses: they offer equal terms of inclusion (or of exclusion). The German response is, not in name but in substance, nationalist, in that it draws a particularistic distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ as differently situated groups that cannot mix. The reader will now guess where the author stands on the headscarf debates: he finds the British and French responses equally legitimate (though one may quarrel about which one has less desirable consequences), yet he finds the German response deeply wanting in a Europe which fifteen million Muslims call home and which may fashion itself as a Christian Club only at its own peril.

This book continues my long-standing interest in the role of liberalism in western states’ immigration, citizenship, and ethnic minority (as a shorthand: membership) policies. In Selecting by Origin: Ethnic Migration in the Liberal State (2005), I have explicated how liberalism has made western states’ immigration policies less ethnically and racially discriminatory and thus more universalistic in the past half-century. In the present book I turn to liberalism’s home ground, which is the containment of religious conflict. The book builds and expands on a recent article of mine, ‘State neutrality and Islamic headscarf laws in France and Germany’ (2007a). The article contrasts neutrality and multicultural recognition as opposite ways of dealing with cultural difference. The present book is more about variants of liberalism and their impact on the reception of Islam in Europe.

Moreover, as is flagged by the title, I take the headscarf as a ‘mirror of identity’ which forces the French, the British, and the Germans to see who they are and to rethink the kinds of societies and public institutions they want to have. The liberal and the national themes are closely intertwined: as the headscarf is an affront to liberal values, the identities reflected in it are liberal identities. Even the German self-definition as ‘Christian–occidental’ is a liberal identity, albeit one that unduly particularizes liberalism by confounding genesis and validity, so that Muslims qua Muslims (that is, qua people with different origins) cannot be part of it.

It is time to stop denying that Islam constitutes a fundamental challenge to liberalism. No matter how liberal states and societies respond to this challenge, they cannot but violate some of their own liberal precepts – repress religious liberties, as in the French and German banning of the headscarf, or encourage illiberal views and practices, which seems to be the result of British toleration.

I would like to thank the Swiss Foundation for Population, Migration, and Environment (PME) for funding this research from April 2007 on. In this period, Leyla Arslan provided helpful research assistance. This is the first part of a larger PME-funded project with John Torpey (CUNY, Graduate Center) which compares the institutional accommodation of Islam in North America and western Europe.

Paris, February 2008

1

The Islamic Headscarf in Western Europe

Islamic headscarf controversy is no longer a peculiarity of France, whose classic Foulard Affair dates back to 1989. In fact, there is no country in western Europe today which does not have its own headscarf controversy.1 And, one must add, each country has the headscarf controversy it deserves. In France, the innocuous bandanna has stirred debate for two decades now, a debate culminating in the 2004 law against ‘ostensible’ religious symbols in public schools. In Britain, which had long considered itself immune to the religious cloth struggles of the continent, it is the more extreme wear of the jilbab and niqab2 that has recently tested the limits of its multicultural leanings. The Netherlands, site of Europe’s most draconian retreat from multiculturalism, has predictably attempted the most draconian anti-veiling measure of all, proposing a law in 2006 that would prohibit the wearing of the face-covering veil in all public places (though it never went beyond the conceptual stage). More moderately, Germany, in a series of sub-federal Länder laws passed in 2004 and 2005, prohibited public school teachers from dressing up religiously, but made a curious exemption for the adherents of the Christian faith.

The European proliferation of headscarf controversies raises at least two questions. First, why is there controversy at all? Secondly, why has it gone to different lengths in different countries? Both questions require different frames of reference. On the side of commonalities, there are certain liberal norms, most notably gender equality, which seem to be violated by the ‘submissive’ headscarf. On the side of variation, national legacies of relating religion to the state fare centrally, among other factors.